Octave


About

Octave is a revival of an elzevir-style typeface originally designed by Théophile Beaudoire. French Elzevir types, also known as French Old Style types, started in 1846 with Louis Perrin’s cut of the Lyons capitals, a roman titling font. A few years later in 1858, Théophile Beaudoire, sous-directeur of the Fonderie Générale in Paris, transformed the idea of the Lyons capitals into a complete Oldstyle typeface (his Elzévir, named after the Dutch Renaissance printers Elsevier) to enornmous success. Elzevirs, or French Oldstyle typefaces were subsquently widely reproduced by type foundries all over the world.

Our revival is based on a cut of Beaudoire’s Elzevir used in a book titled, Histoire de La Musique en Russie by Albert Soubies 1898, and remains fairly faithful to the source material with optical adjustments and improvements made during the digital drawing process. The typeface features a translation-style contrast, meaning the thicks and thins of the letters are largely decided by how a calligraphic broad-nibbed pen would create those letters. Small serifs and heavy-feeling bowls in letterforms give the typeface a cool elegance.

Octave was born from a book about music (hence the name), and features several musical emojis and symbols as an homage to the source material and also to Théophile Beaudoire, who was not only a typographer working in with the latin alphabet but who also engraved punches for musical typography. After spending more time with these letterforms, we also added a series of small caps, and small display caps that are accesible via an OpenType feature that allow for interesting and expressive ligatures and rhythmic typographic compositions that feel like little pieces of typographical music.


Styles

Hairline
Thin
Light
Regular
Medium
Bold
Black

Weight
  • Octave Variable
  • Weight 400
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Variable fonts are a modern type of font file that contain more than one style of a font. For example, Sprig Variable has a weight axis and contains all weights of the font ranging from hairline to super. So instead of having 8 files, a variable font allows you to have just one. In addition to reducing files and file size (which is great for the web ♥) variable fonts provide tons of amazing animation opportunities, and allow you to get super precise. In Sprig Variable you’re not limited to the weights we define, if you need something heavier than regular but lighter than medium, a variable font allows you to get it just right for your project.

Octave Hairline
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Thin
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Light
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Regular
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Medium
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Bold
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Black
150px
Weight
Size

Octave Regular
24px
Weight
Size

ABBA is a Swedish supergroup formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group’s name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names arranged as a palindrome. One of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time, they became one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982, and in 2022. In 1974, ABBA were Sweden’s first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Waterloo,” which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition’s history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band’s main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group’s music, with later compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA separated in December 1982, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for multiple audiences including stage, musicals and movies, while Fältskog and Lyngstad pursued solo careers. Ten years after the group broke up, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA’s music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a stage musical that toured worldwide and, as of April 2022, is still in the top-ten longest running productions on both Broadway (closed in 2015) and the West End (still running). A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018. In 2016, the group reunited and started working on a digital avatar concert tour. Newly recorded songs were announced in 2018. Voyage, their first new album in 40 years, was released on 5 November 2021 to positive critical reviews and strong sales in numerous countries. ABBA Voyage, a concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars, opened in May 2022 in London.


Octave Regular
18px
Weight
Size
Mon cher Oncle Cary, Tu viens d’entrer dans ton dix-septième lustre ; tes grandes facultés intellectuelles sont toujours très vives, je suis heureux de pouvoir te dédier un modeste livre qui traite de choses que tu aimas toute ta vie. Ancien maître imprimeur typographe et amant des Muses, tu comprendras mieux qu’un autre combien a été longue et ardue la tâche que je me suis imposée pour éviter l’écueil où tant de typographes ont échoué depuis si longlemps. Si je suis arrivé au but, c’est grâce à les savantes leçons et c’est un acte de haute justice de faire remoter jusqu’à mon professeur, le peu de mérite que je puis avoir en faisant paraître le premier Manuel de Typographie musicale. Reçois, mon cher Oncle, cette nouvelle preuve de ma constante amitié, Th. BEAUDOIRE. On dit que les Muses ont créé la Musique, et Aristide Quintitien nous apprend que le système des grecs était basé sur le tétracorde (quatre cordes) ou échelle de quatre sons qu’ils répétaient comme nous répétons l’octave. Les grecs notaient la musique à l’aide des lettres de leur alphabet. Vers le Vᵉ siècle, Boéce notait la musique au moyen de lettres différentes de l’alphabet latin ; vint ensuite la méthode dite grégorienne dans laquelle on employait : 1° les sept premières lettres majuscules de l’alphabet ABCDEFG pour l’octave grave, l’A représentait le LA grave ; 2° les sept premières lettres minuscules pour l’octave des sons médiaux ; 3° pour les sons aigus on doublait les minuscules. Un peu plus tard on ajouta une corde à l’octave grave, c’est-à-dire une note correspondante au SOL grave ; elle fut représentée par le gamma grec. L’échelle des sons commençant par le gamma prit le nom de “Gamme”. Dans chacune de ces gammes la note altérable SI, était représentée par les B, b ; on écrivait le SI naturel avec un b carré ; quand cette note était plus faible, plus molle, on employait un b rond ; ce sont ces deux lettres qu’on appelle maintenant bécarre (b carré, bémol (b mol). Après la notation alphabétique vinrent quelques essais de notation noire, mais du VIlᵉ au XIlIᵉ siècle, la plus grande partie des manuscrits en musique religieuse et profane fut notée par les Neumes, espèces de signes sténographiques. On les écrivait au-dessus des paroles à diverse hauteurs conventionnelles. Les sons aigus étaient représentés par l’accent aigu, les sons graves par l’accent grave ; plusieurs sons, modulés sur une syllabe, par des ligatures formées avec ces accents.

Glyphs

Basic Latin

Extended Latin

Ligatures and Alternates

Swashes

Ordinals and modifiers

Small Caps

Mini Caps Bottom

Mini Caps Middle

Mini Caps Bottom

Punctuation

Case Sensitive Glyphs

Currency, Symbols, Math, Arrows

Numerals, Superior, Inferior, Fractions

Tabular Glyphs

Emojis


FAIRE Octave Emojis

Octave Colophon


Design
Maxime Gau

Engineering
Sabrina Nacmias

Release
2023

Version
1.0

File Types
.OTF, .TTF, .WOFF2

Supported Languages


Albanian
Asu
Basque
Bemba
Bena
Breton
Catalan
Chiga
Colognian
Cornish
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Estonian
Faroese
Filipino
Finnish
French
Friulian
Galician
Ganda
German
Gusii
Hungarian
Inari Sami
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Jola-Fonyi
Kabuverdianu
Kalenjin
Kinyarwanda
Koyra ChiiniLatvian
Koyraboro Senni
Lithuanian
Lower Sorbian
Luo
Luxembourgish
Luyia
Machame
Makhuwa-Meetto
Makonde
Malagasy
Maltese
Manx
Marshallese
Moldavian
Morisyen
North Ndebele
Northern Sami
Norwegian Bokmål
Norwegian Nynorsk
Nyankole
Oromo
Polish
Portuguese
Quechua
Romanian
Romansh
Rombo
Rundi
Rwa
Samburu
Sango
Sangu
Scottish Gaelic
Sena
Serbian
Shambala
Shona
Slovak
Soga
Somali
Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Swiss German
Taita
Tasawaq
Teso
Turkish
Upper Sorbian
Uzbek (Latin)
Volapük
Vunjo
Walser
Welsh
Western Frisian
Zarma
Zulu